‘Grown-ish’ Posts Freeform’s Biggest Comedy Series Launch Since 2012

Grown-ish: Wednesday’s premiere drew 1.56M total viewers, including 917k in the demo, to become the cable net’s best comedy series launch in 5 1/2 years. The Black-ish spinoff also was the Disney-owned outlet’s top overall series start since Shadowhunters two years ago.

Some other numbers from the series premiere: Grown-ish opened as Wednesday’s No. 1 scripted series on cable TV among women 18-49, women 18-34 and females 12-34; scored the best digital bow for a Freeform series with 4.5M viewers in the first three days; and was the strongest scripted comedy series launch on basic cable among women 18-49 since April 2014 (MTV’s Faking It), among women 18-34 since July 2014 (FX’s Married) and among adults 18-49 since September 2016 (FX’s Atlanta).

The 13-episode Grown-ish follows Zoey (Yara Shahidi), the eldest Johnson family daughter from ABC’s Black-ish, as she heads off for her freshman year at California University and quickly discovers that not everything goes her way once she leaves the nest. Billed as a contemporary take on the current issues facing students and administrators in the world of higher education, it also stars Deon Cole, Chris Parnell, Emily Arlook, Trevor Jackson, Francia Raisa and Jordan Buhat. The series hails from from Black-ish executive producer Kenya Barris.